Edwards Betty. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

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rockbottom "ABC" of drawing, necessarily—or at least ideally—

learned before progressing to imaginative drawing, painting, and

sculpture.

With this information about the symbol system in mind, you

may want to add a few more notes on the back of your drawings.

Then, put all three drawings away for safekeeping. Do not look at

them again until after you have completed my course and have

learned to see and draw.

Student showing: A preview of before-and-after

drawings

Now I would like to show you some drawings done by my stu-

dents. The drawings show typical changes in students' drawing

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Cynthia M. Skewes

Tony Schwartz

Susan W. Dryfoos

Yvonne Olive

The drawings on this page and the following page show

Before-and-After drawings of an entire five-day class,

held in Seattle, August 4,1997, to August 8,1997.

THE DRAWING EXERCISES: ONE STEP AT A TIME

Frank Fernandez

John Davis

Angie Hinckel

Alan O'Connell

Dianne

Sam Ferguson

Lori Bishop

Chris Fercnison

Virginia Davis Gay Stroble

Carla Di Pietro

Darci Park

Drawings from the five-day Seattle class, continued.

2O THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

ability from the first lesson (before instruction) to the last lesson.

Most of these students attended five-day workshops, eight hours

a day for the five days. Both the Pre-instruction and Post-instruc-

tion drawings are self-portraits, drawn by students observing

their own images in mirrors. As you can see, the Before-and-After

drawings in the student examples demonstrate that the students

have transformed their ways of seeing and drawing. The changes

are significant enough that it almost seems as though two differ-

ent persons have done the drawings.

Learning to perceive is the basic skill that the students acquired.

The change you see in their ability to draw possibly reflects an

equally significant change in their ability to see. Regard the draw-

ings from that standpoint: as a visible record of the students'

improvement in perceptual skills.

On pages 19-20 I present Before-and-After drawings by an

entire class, a group of adult students in Seattle, Washington.

Looking at the "Before" drawings, you will see that students came

to the five-day class with different levels of existing drawing skills

and backgrounds in art. The "After" drawings, done five days

later, however, show a remarkably consistent high level of skills.

This overall success rate, I believe, demonstrates our goal with

every group: that every student will gain high-level drawing skills

regardless of their existing (or non-existing) skill level.

Expressing yourself in drawing: The nonverbal

language of art

The purpose of this book is to teach you basic skills in seeing and

drawing. The purpose of this book is not teach you to express

yourself, but instead to provide you with the skills that will release

you from stereotypic expression. This release in turn will open

the way for you to express your individuality—your essential

uniqueness—in your own way, using your own particular drawing

style.

If, for a moment, we could regard your handwriting as a form

of expressive drawing, we could say that you are already express-

ing yourself with a fundamental element of art: line.

"The art of archery is not an ath-

letic ability mastered more or less

through primarily physical prac-

tice, but rather a skill with its ori-

gin in mental exercise and with its

object consisting in mentally hit-

ting the mark.

"Therefore, the archer is basically

aiming for himself. Through this,

perhaps, he will succeed in hitting

the target—his essential self."

— Herrigel

THE DRAWING EXERCISES: ONE STEP AT A TIME 21

On a sheet of paper, right in the middle of the sheet, write

your own name the way you usually sign your name. Next, regard

your signature from the following point of view: you are looking

at a drawing which is your original creation—shaped, it is true,

by the cultural influences of your life, but aren't the creations of

every artist shaped by such influences?

Every time you write your name, you have expressed yourself

through the use of line. Your signature, "drawn" many times over,

is expressive of you, just as Picasso's line is expressive of him. The

line can be "read" because, in writing your name, you have used

the nonverbal language of art. Let's try reading a line. There are

signatures in the margin. All are the same name: Luther Gibson.

Tell me, what is the first Luther Gibson like?

You would probably agree that Luther Gibson is more likely

to be extroverted than introverted, more likely to wear bright col-

ors than subtle ones, and, at least superficially, likely to be outgo-

ing, talkative, even dramatic. Of course, these assumptions may or

may not be correct, but the point is that this is how most people

would read the nonverbal expression of the signature, because

that's what Luther Gibson is (nonverbally) saying.

Let's look at the second Luther Gibson in the margin.

Now, look at the third signature. How would you describe

him?

And another, the fourth signature.

And the last signature? How would you read that?

Now regard your own signature and respond to the nonverbal

message of its line. Write your name in three different ways, each

time responding to the message. Next, think back on how you

responded differently to each of these signatures; recall that the

name that was formed by the "drawings" did not change. What,

then, were you responding to?

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

You were seeing and responding to the felt, individual quali-

ties of each "drawn" line or set of lines. You responded to the felt

speed of the line, the size and spacing of the marks, the muscle

tension or lack of tension. All of that is precisely communicated

by the line, the directional pattern or lack of pattern—in other

words, by the whole signatures and all of their parts at once. A

person's signature is an individual expression so unique to the

writer that it is identified legally as being "owned" by that single

person and none other.

Your signature, however, does more than identify you. It also

expresses you and your individuality, your creativity. Your signa-

ture is true to yourself. In this sense, you already speak the non-

verbal language of art: You are using the basic element of

drawing, line, in an expressive way, unique to yourself.

In the chapters to follow, therefore, we won't dwell on what

you can do already. Instead, the aim is to teach you how to see so

that you can use your expressive, individual line to draw your

perceptions.

Drawing as a mirror and metaphor for the artist

The object of drawing is not only to show what you are trying to

portray, but also to show you. To illustrate how much personal

style is embedded in drawings, I wish to show you two drawings

on page 24, done at the same time by two different people—

myself and artist/teacher Brian Bomeisler. We sat on either side

of our model, Heather Allan. We were demonstrating how to

draw a profile portrait for a group of students, the same profile

portrait you will learn to do in Chapter Nine. The materials we

used were identical, and we both drew for the same length of

time—30 to 40 minutes. A viewer immediately sees that the

model is the same—that is, both drawings achieve a likeness of

Heather. But Brian's portrayal expresses his response to Heather

in his more "painterly" style (meaning emphasis on shapes), and

my portrayal expresses my response in my more "linear" style

(emphasis on line). By looking at my portrait of Heather, the

viewer catches sight of me, and Brian's drawing provides an

Torii Kiyotada (active 1723-1750),

Actor Dancing, and Torii Kiyonobu I

(1664—1729), Woman Dancer (c. 1708).

Courtesy of The Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane

Dick Fund, 1949-

Line expresses two different kinds

of dances in the two Japanese

prints. Try to visualize each dance.

Can you hear the music in your

imagination? Try to see how the

character of the line controls your

response to the drawing.

THK DRAWING KXKRCISES: ON'F. STKP AT A TIMF.

Heather by instructor Brian

Bomeisler.

insight into him. Thus, paradoxically, the more clearly you can

perceive and draw what you see in the external world, the more

clearly the viewer can see you, and the more you can know about

yourself. Drawing becomes a metaphor for the artist.

Because the exercises in this book focus on expanding your

perceptual powers, not on techniques of drawing, your individual

style—your unique and valuable manner of drawing—will

emerge intact. This is true even though the exercises concentrate

on realistic drawings, which tend to "look alike" in a large sense.

(This probably is true only for this century, because we are used

to seeing radically different forms of art, both stylistically and

culturally.) But a closer look at realistic art reveals subtle differ-

ences in line style, emphasis, and intent. In this age of massive

self-expression in the arts, this more subtle communication often

goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

As your skills in seeing increase, your ability to draw what

you see will increase, and you will observe your style forming.

Guard it, nurture it, and cherish it, for your style expresses you.

As with the Zen master-archer, the target is yourself.

Heather by the author.

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN

Fig. 2-2. Rembrandt Van Rijn

(1606-1669), Winter Landscape

(c. 1649). Courtesy of The Fogg Art

Museum, Harvard University.

Rembrandt drew this tiny land-

scape with a rapid calligraphic

line. Through it, we sense Rem-

brandt's visual and emotional

response to the deeply silent win-

ter scene. We see, therefore, not

only the landscape; we see through

the landscape to Rembrandt him-

self.

A "bold" line.

A "broken" line.

A "pure" line.

A "lost-and-found" line.

Artists are known by their unique

line qualities, and experts in draw-

ing often base their authentication

of drawings on these known line

qualities. Styles of line have actu-

ally been put into named cate-

gories. There are quite a few: the

"bold line;" the "broken line"

(sometimes called "the line that

repeats itself"); the "pure line"—

thin and precise, sometimes called

"the Ingres line" after the 19th cen-

tury French artist Jean-Auguste

Dominique Ingres; the "lost-and-

found line," which starts out dark,

fades away, then becomes dark

again. See samples in figure 2-3.

Beginning students most often

admire drawings done in a rapid,

self-confident style—the "bold"

line that is rather like Picasso's, in

fact. But an important point to

remember is that every style of line is

valued, one not more than another.

Fig. 2-3.

THE DRAWING EXERCISES: ONE STEP AT A TIME

Your Brain:

The Right and Left

of It

"Few people realize what an aston-

ishing achievement it is to be able to

see at all. The main contribution of

the new field of artificial intelli-

gence has been not so much to solve

these problems of information han-

dling as to show what tremendously

difficult problems they are. When

one reflects on the number of com-

putations that must have to be car-

ried out before one can recognize

even such an everyday scene as

another person crossing the street,

one is left with a feeling of amaze-

ment that such an extraordinary

series of detailed operations can be

accomplished so effortlessly in such

a short space of time."

F. H. C. Crick, "Thinking about the

Brain," in The Brain, San Francisco:

A Scientific American Book, W. H.

Freeman, 1979, p. 130.

ow DOES THE HUMAN BRAIN WORK? That remains the

most baffling and elusive of all questions having to do

with human understanding. Despite centuries of study and

thought and the accelerating rate of knowledge in recent years,

the brain still engenders awe and wonder at its marvelous capa-

bilities—many of which we simply take for granted.

Scientists have targeted visual perception in particular with

highly precise studies, and yet vast mysteries still exist. The most

ordinary activities are awe-inspiring. For example, in a recent

contest, people were shown a photograph of six mothers and

their six children, arranged randomly in a group. Contestants,

strangers to the photographed group, were asked to link the six

mother-and-child pairs. Forty people responded, and each had

paired all of the mothers and children correctly.

To think of the complexity of that task is to make one's head

spin. Our faces are more alike than unlike: two eyes, a nose, a

mouth, hair, and two ears, all more or less the same size and in the

same places on our heads. Telling two people apart requires fine

discriminations beyond the capability of nearly all computers, as

I mentioned in the Introduction. In this contest, participants had

to distinguish each adult from all the others and estimate, using

even finer discriminations, which child's features/head-

shape/expression best fitted with which adult. The fact that peo-

ple can accomplish this astounding feat and not realize how

astounding it is forms, I think, a measure of our underestimation

of our visual abilities.

Another extraordinary activity is drawing. As far as we know,

of all the creatures on this planet, human beings are the only ones

who draw images of things and persons in their environment.

Monkeys and elephants have been persuaded to paint and draw

and their artworks have been exhibited and sold. And, indeed,

these works do seem to have expressive content, but they are

never realistic images of the animals' perceptions. Animals do not

do still-life, landscape, or portrait drawing. So unless there is

some monkey that we don't know about out there in the forest

drawing pictures of other monkeys, we can assume that drawing

THE NEW DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN